16 comments to Samizdata quote of the day

Here’s another Orwell quote: “If you compare commercial advertising with political propaganda, one thing that strikes you is its relative intellectual honesty. The advertiser at least knows what he is aiming at – that is, money – whereas the propagandist, when he is not a lifeless hack, is often a neurotic working off a private grudge and actually desirous of the exact opposite of the thing he advocates.” [George Orwell, review of ‘Beggar My Neighbour’ in Horizon, September 1943.

Given Orwell’s left-wing standpoint, this recognition of the superior honesty of commerce is noteworthy.

(There are of course Adam Smith quotes that treat commercial and political propaganda as more on a level. It would be fair to say that Smith is talking about what we would call crony capitalism; propaganda aimed at securing government favours.)

In a world of lies, where everyone else lies and is lied to, would anyone recognise an honest statement? Hitler told the truth about his ambitions in ‘Mein Kampf’, and no-one believed him. That is, no other politician believed him. Perhaps because they always tell, and expect to be told, lies?

I don’t know. Post modernism has taken us so far into the realms of wishful thinking on economics, gender, climate forecasting, that I no longer think the gatekeepers are practising deceit, which implies a knowledge of and deliberate suppression of reality, but rather the West has entered a new religious phase in which the belief in six impossible things before breakfast is the spiritual exercise of choice. Bring back the Enlightenment!

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